COVID-19-fueled learning
Alex Jesus
Has anyone noticed that since COVID-19 has taken over and we have been mostly stuck at home, random pursuits of learning are more frequent? I definitely had a couple quarter-life crisis moments over the past year, but one bright spot has been the various and aimless nights of Googling and YouTubing.
Anyways, here’s my rant: steroids. Like many, I had no idea what steroids were necessarily for or what they did. Popularized in certain fields and clearly a massive staple for many famous actors and athletes, I thought that I should try to understand why and how they are so controversial. I discovered that steroids and other HRT (hormone replacement therapy) drugs are very common among casual, non-famous citizens. Their uses range from athletics, to hair loss prevention, to even breast cancer medication. Turns out that the steroid education community is massive on YouTube these days, as channels that largely function as informational/opinion-based libraries have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
I probably didn’t know anything substantial about steroids till that research tangent. Next on my list is a comprehensive study of the glory days of Asian kickboxing. Welcome to 2021, pandemic peoples.
A plea for plant propagation
Chandy Dancey
I have a confession to make: I have a compulsion to steal plants by propagating them. I justify this by telling myself that if I take a graft, grab some root, or snip off a few leaves I’ll be able to effectively clone the plant. That way I’m not stealing, right? They have their original plant, and I get a baby that I can raise as my own. One day it’s my dream to have a garden made entirely of plants that I’ve pinched from others — a thief’s garden, if you will. I think it’s cute that every plant will have a story. (Oh, that’s one I filched from a public park. That’s my neighbour’s rosebush. This here is my mother’s coleus.)
If you’re ever inclined to join me on my dark (but also dorky) mission, here are some tips. If you’re taking a cutting from a plant, make sure you get two leaves and a node. A node is a little nodule along the stem that roots can grow out of, so make sure to cut below one. To propagate a succulent, you’ll want to neatly pull off a leaf and allow it to dry before placing it on some succulent soil. Plants have been blessed with different methods of asexual reproduction, so go out, fellow gardeners, and take advantage of them.
Oh lord, she stuck
Andrea Sadowski
There is no question that these last 12 months have been crammed full of world-altering news and events that we have all, as a collective human population, had to just deal with. How are we dealing with it? Flaming hot memes. I am somewhat of a meme connoisseur myself, and I can proudly say it is my favourite way to consume news. When times get darker, the memes just get funnier.
As of writing this, the massive container ship Ever Given is blocking the Suez Canal, one the world’s main transportation routes for trade. What gets sent in to save global trade? A tiny excavator and equally small diggers. Everyone is doing the best they can, yet nothing can free this gargantuan ship. It’s up to us now, the memers, to make light of this disastrous situation. You may have had bad days at work or an embarrassing parallel parking job, but at least you’ve never halted world trade and caused a massive cargo-ship traffic jam.
Birthday blues
Carissa Wiens
March 11 was a tough day for many to swallow because that was the one-year mark since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. My March 11 was a few weeks ago when I celebrated my second pandemic birthday.
That was when everything really sunk in: that the deep indent on my couch only took one year to make, that my 25th year of life ran away from me, and that even with vaccination goals set by the government, we could still be here for a while longer.
I’ve decided that if we’re all still in this same predicament by March of 2022, I’m going to skip my birthday — no eating cake by myself and no getting my hopes up that this day will be better. I will go about my regular day (or just spend the entire day in bed) because I don’t want to spend another birthday reflecting on how terrible of a year it’s been.
(Elyssa English /The Cascade)
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
